The Party System
advocates the adoption of proportional representation
as the best method "of ensuring that every substantial
body of political opinion in the country should be repre-
sented in proportion to its strength.0 "It is only," he
writes, "on the basis of the security and stability which
proportional representation can alone secure that free
and responsible criticism can be carried on."1
The argument is, obviously, both able and persuasive;
I yet believe it to be wholly erroneous. There is no evi-
dence that the prestige of the legislature is higher in
countries like France, where the group-system obtains,
than it is with ourselves; on the contrary, the deputy's
freedom of manoeuvre tends to discredit any Govern-
ment by making it uncertain of the steady allegiance upon
which alone a great programme can be carried through.
The "significant and constantly recurring trend towards
a three-party system" in Great Britain has, the abnor-
mality of the Irish Party apart, occurred exactly twice in
the last hundred years; it occurred in.the thirty years
of confusion after 1832 when the modern Liberal and
Conservative parties were emerging from the political con-
figuration of the pre-reform epoch; and it occurred again,
slowly from 1906 to 1918, and more rapidly afterwards,
when the emergence of Socialism as a new principle of
political action in this country was re-shaping fundamen-
tally the whole orientation of our politics. Since approval
or disapproval of Socialism is now the real issue before the
electorate, it is natural for the division of parties to turn
upon their attitude to its principles. A centre party, such
as Mr. Muir desires, naturally disapproves of such an
evolution since, granted our system of voting, it tends
to disappear between the two bodies who present the
electorate with a definite and decisive choice.
1 Hew Britain it Governed (1930), Chapters IV and V,
77